PNN – South Africa’s ambassador to Russia announced that 25 countries now want to join the BRICS group of countries.
According to the report of Pakistan News Network, Mzvukili Maktoka, South Africa’s ambassador to Russia, announced in an interview with “Tass” news agency that currently, 25 countries are on the waiting list to join BRICS, and new members are expected to be introduced to this group at the Kazan meeting in Russia.
Maktoka further added: It is important to clarify how a country joins BRICS. I didn’t want to use the word join. There are two processes to join BRICS.
He explained about this: In process number one, the country in question can show its intention to join BRICS. In process number two, you can directly apply and say I want to join BRICS. Currently, 6 of these 25 countries have officially applied and the rest have expressed their interest, however, the list of final candidates will be determined by the BRICS summit in Kazan in October and BRICS will become bigger.
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At the beginning of December, Anil Soklal, the representative of South Africa in the BRICS group, announced that 5 countries, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia, and Egypt, will join BRICS starting today, January 1, 2024.
The BRICS group of countries, which initially included Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, invited six other countries to join this group last August; A group whose goal is to confront the dominance of the world order led by America.
Russia founded the BRICS group in 2009 and currently accounts for 42% of the world’s population, 30% of the world’s geography and 24% of the world’s economic output.
The five new countries accepted the invitation by participating in the last BRICS meeting in Durban, South Africa, in early January, and their representatives attended the BRICS meeting in Moscow on January 30.
However, Argentina canceled its application to join BRICS after the victory of far-right President Javier Maile last month.